A growing number of Australians are turning to gambling, with figures showing the number of punters across the country has returned to pre-COVID levels, leading to renewed calls for an ad ban.
A report published by the Australian National University’s Centre for Gambling Research on Friday revealed the grim trend, with lead author Aino Suomi saying even non-gamblers have been caught up in the industry since the pandemic.
“Once lockdown restrictions began to ease the gambling participation – as well as gambling risk – tended to increase … including non-gamblers,” Dr Suomi said on Friday.
Tim Costello, spokesperson at the Alliance for Gambling Reform, said he wasn’t surprised by the figures, arguing that an explosion in sports betting advertising nationwide is a key driver.
As The New Daily has reported previously, major betting giants like TAB and Sportsbet are spending hundreds of millions on marketing to both cash in on, and further fuel, gambling rates.
Mr Costello said that children sitting down with their parents this weekend to watch Australia’s men’s cricket team begin their Ashes campaign will face a barrage of such ads on the Nine Network.
“This is cultural capture,” he said.
“It’s the systematic capture of sport by the gambling industry – whether it’s sports betting ads … or at the pokies where you go on down to your community club.”
Grim figures show toll
The ANU research found that poker machines and sports betting recovered fastest from the pandemic, though earlier research has separately found the industry did well during COVID too.
The figures speak for themselves – Sportsbet has told its investors that gross revenue from Australian sports betting almost doubled, to more than $8 billion a year, between 2017 and 2022.
It sparked an advertising bonanza, with Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) research earlier this year finding 78 per cent of Australians see gambling ads every week.
And almost half of at-risk people responded by betting more, the AIFS survey of 1765 found.
Australians are losing an estimated $25 billion a year from the entire legal gambling industry, which is the highest rate of losses on a population-adjusted basis across the entire world.
Ban gambling ads
Mr Costello said that a national ban on gambling advertising will be required to curb such losses, with sports betting serving as a gateway towards higher risk pokie machines.
Restricting access is an effective way to reduce gambling rates, including pokies and sports betting, ANU’s research found.
“Ten-year-olds don’t know the difference between Marlboro [cigarettes] and Peter Stuyvesant,” Mr Costello said. “But they can tell you the logos, jingles and odds of gambling companies.
“It’s a gateway by grooming kids, deliberately, which produces in later life mental health problems and risky behaviour.”
There have been moves in Canberra to regulate sports betting recently, with Independent MP Zoe Daniel even moving a bill that would remove sports betting companies from the airwaves.
Such a move would not be unprecedented. Other nations, such as Belgium, Italy and Spain, have banned gambling ads.
But the Labor government this week blocked debate on Ms Daniel’s Bill, pointing to an ongoing inquiry that is examining ways to regulate gambling advertisements.
House leader Tony Bourke said the government supports the principles behind the push for a ban, but want a “comprehensive” response from their probe before moving forward.
“The government is committed to ensuring online gambling takes place within a robust framework with strong consumer protections,” he said.
“Like many Australians we, too, as the government, are concerned about gambling ads.”
The Senate inquiry into gambling advertising is due to report in weeks but isn’t expected to call for an outright ban on gambling ads, with national sporting codes remaining unsupportive of it.
